Quality - A Tool for Achieving Excellence

Introduction

For an organization to be successful it is of paramount importance to exceed the customer expectations as to generate customer delight. One of the best ways of doing this is by providing quality products and services.

In technical language, quality means to a product adhering to the specifications. For customer probably meeting or exceeding the expectation could be quality.

Therefore, quality has different meaning to different people, for example, in automobile industry quality means cars with no defects and works smoothly. Quality involves meeting and exceeding of customer expectations. So to summarize quality is:

Satisfying customer defined standards.

Meet customer needs

Meet or exceed customer expectations.

Satisfy future needs and requirements of customers.

Quality Definitions

According to industry and users quality has many definitions some of them are as follows:

Customer Oriented Industry: Meeting customer expectation

Manufacturing Industry: Meeting technical specification and working with no defects

Product Oriented Industry: Product has additional value compared to similar products available in the market.

Value Oriented Industry: Product is perfect combination of features in the given price band.

The two main objectives of Total Quality Management are 100% customer satisfaction and zero defects. TQM is a process beyond quality of product or services; it deals with the business philosophy of the organization. TQM propagates the concept of doing right things right and at first time itself. In TQM:

Total means involvement of top management as well as workers

Quality means meeting expectation of the customers

Management means management of quality across the organization

The main focus of the total quality management is as follows:

Involvement of all employees in the process

Selection of suppliers

Organization structure to support the process

Maximum customer satisfaction

Appropriate reward for quality improvement and suggestions

Considering above focus points, scope of TQM can be defined as follows:

Organization should encourage building of culture promoting TQM.

Organizational resources, including infrastructure should be dedicated in TQM.

Top management decision and structure should support the TQM process.

Proper training and environment should be created before implementation of TQM.

Total Quality Management gives a great importance to customers and suppliers. Here customers and supplier both can be internal as well external. The relationship of organization with customers as well supplier is critical in continuation of TQM. Therefore, it is important to understand customers and suppliers.

Principles of Total Quality Management

The main principles of Total Quality Management are as follows:

TQM proactively works towards prevention of quality problems.

TQM strives to achieve a state with zero defects or minimal defects.

TQM aims at producing right quality products at the first instance itself.

TQM pushes the concept that quality is not the responsibility of production department but of organization as a whole.

TQM encourages continuous improvement of business and production process.

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The article is Written By Prachi Juneja and Reviewed By Management Study Guide Content Team. MSG Content Team comprises experienced Faculty Member, Professionals and Subject Matter Experts. We are a ISO 2001:2015 Certified Education Provider. To Know more, click on About Us. The use of this material is free for learning and education purpose. Please reference authorship of content used, including link(s) to ManagementStudyGuide.com and the content page url.

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